Part Two: Inspired by Nils Karlson

by Marie Westerbom

This series is my contribution to the collective challenge of the group, where I'll show my images, inspired by Nils Karlson.

Nils' images are for me serene, expressive images that require that the viewer remains in the image, and when I do, I get a strong feeling that he has captured the entire universe in a single image, and that his images includes everything, eternity and timelessness, all at the same time. It says everything and I feel everything.

With my own images, especially with my macros, I'd like to show a small section of the whole world that we usually do not see because we do not take the time to look at what we have practically under our feet, and around us daily. An entire small universe in itself.

So in other words, I see myself and Nils expressing exactly the same thing, though from completely opposite directions. Which made this challenge very difficult but very interesting and rewarding.

I tried to figure out by thoughts how I would go about it. It didn't work at all!So then I tried to disconnect the thoughts and instead let my feelings work for me, and that went a bit better. And I had thought that I did not have my own style at all, but felt very strongly that I at least had a hard time leaving it and incorporate something new ...

I decided to use one of my pinhole cameras and infrared black and white film to get the poetic and somewhat suggestive feeling in the images due to the long exposure time. It turned out not enough really, so all these images is additionally taken with a handheld camera, with exposure times between 30 seconds and 3 minutes. It took a lot of rolls of film before I felt satisfied ....

The first image in the series shows my attempt to "copy" Nils to get a sense of how I would go about it, but it became too much of "Nils" and not "Marie's" at all.

Image Two was just the contrary, too much "Marie," and too little "Nils"

Image three made me feel that I was heading in the right direction, but still not right.

Image four, I'm so pleased with it! It was exactly what I was looking for: "Marie's picture with strong inspiration from Nils"

Hope you like it and feel inspired yourselves to go outside what feels comfortable and safe.